Let us cut food export subsidies together, Fischer Boel tells US

Mariann Fischer Boel, the European commissioner for agriculture, plans to make ending the EU’s subsidies for food exports conditional on the US ending similar farm supports when talks on the Doha round of world trade talks enter a crucial phase next week.

Fischer Boel and her colleague Peter Mandelson (trade) will be in Dalian, China, on 11-13 July for a ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The gathering is meant to iron out technical details on farm tariffs. Tim Groser, the New Zealand diplomat chairing the talks, is hoping to complete a draft agreement on the future of agriculture subsidies by the end of this month. He hopes this will pave the way for a formal accord at a conference of the 148-member organisation in Hong Kong this December.

Speaking ahead of her China trip, Fischer Boel said that the EU has an offer on the table to scrap its export subsidies since last year, provided that other rich countries make comparable sacrifices. The US, she said, should commit itself to scrapping its export credits and to cease using food aid as a means for disposing of surpluses produced on the domestic market. Australia, Canada and New Zealand should also be willing to restrain supports for monopoly food exporters.

Fischer Boel has welcomed comments made by George W. Bush last weekend, in which the US president said: “Let’s join hands as wealthy industrialised nations and say to the world, we are going to get rid of all our agricultural subsidies together.” She urged that far-reaching reforms should be proposed in the Farm Bill to go before Congress in 2007.

A WTO official said that America has been in favour of a more comprehensive assault on farm supports than the EU for some time. “Although this hits the headlines and it may be the first time the president has said he wishes to get rid of subsidies, it is not too different from the American position in the negotiations,” the official added.

Although the EU notifies about €1 billion export subsidies to the WTO per year, some studies indicate that the true amount of its export supports could be four times that amount.

Anti-poverty advocates have blamed EU farm policies for undermining the livelihoods of producers in poor countries by flooding their countries with subsidised European food. But Fischer Boel rejected suggestions that if Europe wishes genuinely to lift Africa out of poverty, the most pressing task is to overhaul radically the Union’s farm support regime. “We are not the bad guys,” she said. “In 2001 there was an agreement between the EU and the 49 poorest countries to open up our markets to them. Today Europe is by far the biggest importer of agricultural commodities from the poorest countries.”

Oxfam has voiced concerns about reports that EU negotiators at the WTO wish to link the ending of export subsidies with access for European industrial goods to the markets of ‘advanced’ developing countries such as India and Brazil. Louis Belanger, a spokesman for the campaign group, urged the EU to scrap subsidies by the end of this decade, although France, the largest beneficiary from the Common Agricultural Policy has said the earliest phase-out should be in 2015-17.